Whether it´s necessary to operate a device in gloves, or you only wish the given push-button was sufficiently big and well visible, new series of round and square caps for series Multimec 5G will solve it.

Well known Dutch producer of top quality switches – company MEC, comes with novelties in a form of relatively big caps for a universal series of push buttons Multimec 5G (lifetime of 10 million cycles).

Series 5G is exceptional by the fact, that it can by equipped by a huge amount of caps of various sizes, shapes and colors. In result, you might even not say, that beneath so different push-buttons” (caps), still the same push-button switch is used.

The latest addition to the family of caps for the 5G push buttons is:

● 10R/10RF/10RM – round 30mm caps. 10R has a slightly curved surface, 10RF has a flat surface and sharp edges, and the 10RM has a metal plate with an illuminated legend.

● 10Q/10QM – square 22mm caps. 10Q has a flat surface, 10QM has a metal plate with a illuminated legend.

Multimec 5G push-buttons operate with these caps reliably – independently on the place of pressing the button (in the middle/ on the edge). Both series have optional accessory – sealing enabling to reach IP67 and a plastic spacer. Need for a spacer depends on the front panel thickness (into which a push-button is built-in) and on the overall design of a device. Overall building height is only 11mm and they´re intended to be placed in almost one level with a front panel, resulting in a very elegant look.

Homogenous illumination (backlight) of these big caps can be easily reached by means of 4 small LEDs placed on a PCB around a push-button. This also gives a possibility to freely use various LED according to your choice and to use their color combinations – for example for indication of a device status. As a standard, 7 solid colors are available and 1 transparent “frost ice” white for illumination.
Recently, we also added many other caps and push buttons from company MEC into our offer. All new additions can be found below this article.

Detailed information will provide you the MEC 10Q and MEC 10R datasheets.
Upon request, we´re able to provide you any type from this new series in a short lead time.

Clap switch/Sound-activated switch designed around op-amp, flip-flop and popular 555 IC. Switch avoids false triggering by using 2-clap sound. Clapping sound is received by a microphone, the microphone changes the sound wave to electrical wave which is further amplified by op-amp.

555 timer IC acts as mono-stable multi-vibrator then flip-flop changes the state of output relay on every two-clap sound. This can be used to turn ON/OFF lights and fans. Circuit activates upon two-clap sound and stays activated until another sound triggers the circuit.

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The Project works as electronic toggle switch. The circuit is based on CMOS CD4013 Flip Flop IC, The circuit has two stable states, ON and OFF. Once it is ON, it remains ON till you press the switch again. A short button press of a tactile switch SW1 latches the circuit ON and another toggles it back OFF. Relay switch contacts can handle high AC Voltage as well as High DC current, this makes the project suitable for application like ON/OFF Fan, Light, TV, Pump, DC Motor, any electronic project required electronic toggle operations and few other devices work on AC voltage up to 250V AC or DC current up to 5Amps.

Microcontrollers, the heart of all modern electronic gadgets, are increasingly powered with sub-5V power supplies. This complicates the control of external loads powered by higher voltages. The reduced I/O supply voltage leads to increased complexity in handling high-side voltage switching. Figure 1 illustrates the conventional solution for controlling a 5V high-side switch, driven here by a 3.3V signal.

Well not really, I just don’t enjoy having to climb under the tree every time I want to plug in or unplug the lights. In the interest of saving my sanity, I decided to build a motion activated switch that can power the lights for me. It has an integrated adjustable timer so they will stay on for as long or as short as I want. Here’s a video showing the final test on the fish tank light.

App note from International Rectifier on their IR331x part which offers a bunch of power protection and control all in one chip. [via]

The new IR331x devices designed in P3 technology provide more accuracy of the current feedback. The IR331X devices suit for any application where the load current sensing is required. IR331X is fully protected: programmable current shutdown, over temperature shutdown and reverse battery protection. The current sensing features offer current readout accuracy, high frequency bandwidth, a versatile way to control the current shutdown and replaces the shunt resistor.

Tactile switches (a specific type of momentary switch) are everywhere and they are especially popular on DIY electronics and microcontroller boards because they are well suited to act as a boot option or reset switch. Particularly, momentary switches are switches that don’t save their state when you depress the switch. That is, when you push the switch (and while you have the switch depressed) the circuit is ON, but once you let off the switch it reverts back to OFF.

Microcontroller-based products sometimes require rotary switches. As many microcontrollers have an onboard ADC, it is easy to replace the rotary switch with a low cost potentiometer, when a rotary switch is too expensive or unavailable.

Although digitizing a potentiometer setting to act like a switch requires only a few instructions, an immediate problem is that instabilities in value occur at the switching threshold between one value and the next due to electrical or mechanical noise. The solution is to introduce upper and lower hysteresis thresholds about each transition so that the potentiometer needs to move beyond a threshold before another switch state is validated. For every updated switch state, another pair of thresholds replaces the previous. In this manner, the hysteresis provides clean switching between states.

Sometimes you may need a group of switches where, if any switch is activated, it deactivates the previously active switch. This Design Idea implements such a function with relays.

This “one and only one” function is often implemented as mechanical switches in which an actuator (usually a movable metal bracket) is used to switch contact groups on and off. When any switch is pressed, this bracket first deactivates all switches, then activates the pressed switch.

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The era of the MEMS switch may finally be here thanks to the research efforts of GE. Its MEMS chip, as small as 50 microns square, swathes as fast as 3 GHz and can handle up to 5-kiloWatts of power, making it a candidate for everything from industrial power control, to turning on light bulbs to switching antennas inside a smartphone.